Bishop Killed After Leading Rights Study

Violence, Conflict Tarnish Guatemala

April 28, 1998|By JUANITA DARLING Los Angeles Times

GUATEMALA CITY — A Roman Catholic bishop who supervised a recently published study of human-rights abuses during a 36-year guerrilla war has been slain _ a reminder of the bloody violence that still haunts this nation from its decades of conflict.

An assailant crushed the skull of Bishop Jose Gerardi, 75, with a concrete block as the cleric, returning from dinner with his sister, entered his house late Sunday, church officials said. Gerardi, coordinator of the Guatemalan Archbishop's Office of Human Rights, was hit 14 times on the face and the back of the head. Nothing was stolen.

A statement released on Monday by the independent human-rights office gave the government 72 hours to solve the crime, because ``if impunity is allowed to extend to this case, the cost for Guatemala will be high.''

Police on Monday found a witness and were looking for a suspect based on a composite drawing. Attorney General Hugo Perez called the crime ``a vile murder.''

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan condemned the killing ``in the strongest terms.'' The United States said it deplored the ``senseless act of violence'' and called on Guatemala to begin a full investigation. The Catholic Bishops' International Policy Committee called the killing a ``terrible shock'' and ``despicable crime.''

Authorities in this crime-ridden nation did not provide a motive, but for those who worked with Gerardi, the reason was clear.

``This was a blow against the peace process,'' Guatemalan human-rights activist Hellen Mack said. ``For them to have killed a bishop _ which they did not even dare to do during the war _ shows how far [some people) are willing to go to stop the peace process.''

Gerardi initiated and directed the Roman Catholic Church's Historical Memory Recovery Project, a three-year study of human-rights abuses committed during the guerrilla war that ended with a peace agreement in December 1996. Released on Friday, the 1,400-page study, Never Again, compiled 6,500 interviews, many of them in 15 Mayan languages.

It was the first attempt to document atrocities committed during the 36-year conflict between leftist guerrillas and the government, which except for the last years of the war was composed of U.S.-backed military dictators.

The church report agreed with many scholars that although the war began in the early 1960s, it had its roots in a 1954 CIA-backed coup that deposed democratically elected President Jacobo Arbenz.

The leftist rebellion was supported by many of the poor in the Mayan highlands. Military dictators initiated a scorched-earth policy in the early 1980s, killing thousands of Indian peasants and driving thousands more from their homes to eliminate the rebels' sources of supplies.

During the war, government censorship prevented investigations into more than 400 massacres committed by the insurgents, the armed forces and private armies sympathetic to them. Since the conflict ended, civilian groups have demanded accountability for human-rights abuses committed by both sides.

Twenty-five soldiers are on trial for a massacre at Xaman in 1995, the first time members of the military have been tried for mass murders committed during the conflict.

The church report found that 200,000 people died or disappeared during the war, a figure 60,000 higher than previous estimates.